It is grotesque that Nigeria got an egregious global ranking of being the second after China with highest number of private aircrafts. It was ingloriously revealed that in 2007 the private aircrafts were 20 in number ,but between that time and 2012 they have increased to circa 223 aircrafts in the hands of private citizens, a feat that awkwalized the already battered image of the nation as one of the most corrupt nations of the world .
Nigeria cannot boast of a functional national carrier with rickety 50 commercial airlines that lack sound airworthiness.

It’s tomfoolery and raillery for a nation that pride herself as the giant of Africa with over 70% of the citizenry living below poverty line of $ 2 per day, with high records of official & corporate corruption, with depth traps roads, high rate of inflational index & unemployment, underfunding of education sector resulting in 701 abandoned projects in federal universities, 3,500Mw for 167m population and lack of adequate health care system, that is making the ruling class and elites to embark on luxurious odyssey abroad for medical jamboree.

Yet with all these social disservices to the nation, some nigerians can still own over 200 private aircrafts.

In England, the queen always travels on commercial flights, even the Prime Minister, David Cameron explained that, his country cannot afford the luxury of having a fleet of presidential jets at the expense of their economy. The other time he travelled to U.S, he went on commercial flight, but Nigerian presidency can boast of 9 presidential aircrafts in the presidential fleets. How come these private citizens are neurotic and moromaniac about aircrafts? What is the source of their income, what do they pay as tax? How many of them have an established and profiting ventures apart from politics and government patronage ?. Many politicians are now jetting in and out of their domains in their jets. The faddism that caursed the ghastly accident of Governor Suntai recently.

What are the functions of anti graft agencies? What else do they want the masses to tell them before they embark on thorough investigation of the owners of those private jets, to know the true source of their monies.EFCC & ICPC seems to be effete and rendering sincere disservice to the nation in this regards. Or is it because they are the ones that appointed them, and they can’t bite the fingers that fed them?Why that Mr Lamorde kept crying that the rich are frustrating EFCC's efforts in prosecuting the high provile cases because of their enormous riches?Is it lamentation of his ineptness or what?Being endetate at this time will not help the matters but aggravate it..

Oby Ekwesili, former minister of education said recently that Nigeria get 90% of her revenue from oil, and 80% of it is in the hands of 1% of the populace. A great indictment against these aristocrats who are feeding fats at the expense of the poor masses.

The ruling elites introduce a gravy train for themselves, with some governors rumored to be collecting #3b annually as security vote ,while they wickedly denied the payment of N18,000 minimum wage to the poor workers of their states.

Low budgetary implementation and fraud in the oil sector with Nuhu Ribadu exposing the carn of worms at the sector in his recently submitted report, that is already facing condemnation from those that set it up.

"The World bank recently released numbers indicating that about $400b has been pilfered from Nigeria treasury since independence.One needs to stop for a moment to wrap one's mind around that incredible figure.This amount----$400b -----is approximately the gross domestic products of Norway and of Sweden. In other words Nigeria's currupt ruling class stole the equivalent of the entire economy of a European country in four decades! This theft of national funds is one of the factors essencially making it impossible for Nigeria to succeed"There Was A Country,by Chinua Achebe, page 249. Sen Isa Galaudu reiterated that Nigeria spend in a year what South Africa spend in 5years as budget .N12.4b missing oil windfall, N450b annually lost to corruption,N4trillion still in the hands of MDAs since 2009 which the Auditor General of the Federation querried recently. Pinnacle Contractors L.imited's N2.7b fuel subsidy scam,Otedola/Lawan saga;over N2trillion subsidy probe,TurnAroundMaintenance's scam,N501b pension fraud plus 73,000 ghost workers detected at HOS'office recently, are all enough areas to let free fund flow into the hands of the charlatans.

Instead of opening up the wealth of the nation for all and sundry to create autarkic environment ,they embark on flaky and asthenic economic policies to enrich themselves and emansculate the masses.

Brazil’s national carrier, TAM airline is currently flying to 43 destinations within their country with 92 international destination. The airlines has about 154 modern aircrafts in their care, and expecting to receive the delivery of another 132 aircrafts to be added to their fleet. With target of absorbing another 1,100 aircraft in the next 20 years to boast their aviation industry’s strategic expansion.Presently, some 29,700 people are employed by their airline with passenger volume of 37.7 million as of 2011. Yet they are not in the league of nations with private aircrafts..

Ethiopia that derives her national income majorly from aviation is not among the nations with high number of private aircrafts. Qatar , Emirates even American are not among the list of nations with higher numbers of private aircrafts despite the success story of their economies and advanced industrialization. The standard of living and provision of social infrastructure in those climes are per excellence.

But in Nigeria, the callous and avaricious leaders are swanky and jaunty. The whole nation lack single national airline to our pride yet we have over 200 aircrafts in the hands of private citizens; with over 70% of them being labelled as oil thieves by Hon Dino Melayo. No wonder the carnage on our bad roads does not cut their attention at all, since they do not ply the poor roads damage by their trailers anymore. Horses are purchased for the time of battle, so also those feudal predators have acquired aircrafts to themselves for the time of imminent revolution already predicted by former president Obasanjo to ease their escape, but they will be disappointed on the great day of visitation. They spent billions of naira to repairs 11 airports not because of altruism,patriotism or egalitarianism but because of their egoism.
At the burial of Dr. Olusola Saraki on Wednesday 14th November 2012 at Ilorin, the elites put off effacement to show off their ego trip and called the bluff of whoever cares by appearing in their private and chartered jets at the funeral, telling the poor masses by their actions that they love themselves more than the people and they can’t take the risk of plying those dangerous and tortous roads to Ilorin, but the masses who have no option can travel on those lives claiming roads.

The life of President Jose Mujica of Uruguay is a direct contrast to the lives of those puffy elites and political mountebanks who refused to fix the roads all because of their shortsightedness and lack of feeling for fellow humanbeings. Jose Mujica is being called the world's poorest president ,because out of his $12,000 or £7.500 [N1.9m]monthly salary, he gave 90% {N1.7m] of it to the poor for charity, making his remaining salary $1,200 [N190,000]roughly in line with average Uruguayan income 0f £485 or $775 [N150,000] a month. He was reported to have said that ‘I may appear to be an eccentric old man…. But this is a free choice’ ‘I’m called the poorest president , but I don’t feel poor. Poor people are those who only work to try to keep an expensive lifestyle and always want more and more’. He shuned the luxury of their capital city Montedeus and lives in his wife's farm house. At 77 yrs he knows naked he came to the world and naked he will leave. He is only having a Jalope 1987 VW beetle.

Unlike our legislators who even earn more than President Obama who earns about $400,000 annually and our legislators received around $1.4m annually, with retinue of functionless aids attached to the presidency,governors and council chairmen.

The high point of this absurdity is the craze and involvement of some men of God in this game of vanity displaying. Some of these ministers have penchant for materialism and not evangelism as they may claim. If they have idle fund and excess disposable income to afford them the luxury of private jets why are they charging life sapping tuitions at their private universities, why can't they show the love of Christ to the public?. This week being World Kindness Week, they should have shown kindness by reducing their cut-throat fees and overburden expenses they shameless placed on the shoulder of the parents of their students and tell the world that Christ is merciful.

I guess, it is because of their high fallutin tuitions that the federal government is callously considering of increasing the federal universities tuition to about #450,000 or #500,000 through Steve Oransoye committee's report submitted recently as being reported in same media .

Who are those people that gave aircraft of about $50m to Pastor Ayo Oritsajefor as a birthday and 40years anniversary gift?. At this material time, and he was in his best element to celebrate the insensitivity when many Christians had been and still being killed by Book Haram through terrorism and religion pogrom,daily subjected to endless surrealistic existence. I would have expected that he convert the money to his poverty alleviation scheme ,gives as loans to empower the poor or spend that N2b to upgrade his clinic to a specialist hospital which will give a direct service to humanity, and give him a moral voice against bad governance and official proffligacy.It will give him the grace of telling the gospel truth to the authorities on the parlous state of our roads, since he's having the ears of the presidency as CAN President . It is derisible that Nigeria was ranked number fourteen in the Failed States Index in 2011, majorly because of bad governance.

"A failed state is one that is unable to perform its duties on several levels when violence cascades into an all out internal war, when standard of living massively deteriorate, when the infrastructure of ordinary life decays and when the greed of rulers overwhelms their responsibilities to better their people and their surrounding"There Was A Country by Chinua Achebe,page 250

Pastor Mark DeboTaiwo[ JP] Coordinator,Operation Moving Nigeria Forward,
12 Okedoja Complex,Takie/Idi-Abebe,Ogbomoso. 08099820299,08038264924; debotaiwo@ymail.com,markdebotaiwo@gmail.com Social Analyst and Commentator